Surprise! Linkin Park Drop New Single ‘Guilty All The Same’

Earlier this week, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda told MTV News that the band had “big things coming soon,” and it turns out he wasn’t talking about the Carnivores tour
.

Because, in a surprise move, LP just unveiled a brand-new single, a raucous, rocket-launcher assault called “Guilty All The Same.”

The song — which the band premiered Thursday (March 6) through Shazam — marks a definite departure from the arty atmospherics the band explored on recent albums A Thousand Suns
and LIVING THINGS,
returning instead to their hard-riffing roots.

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The track opens with crunching chords and throbbing bass, then quickly builds to a breakneck pace, highlighted by a doomsday guitar solo and ominous, otherworldly synthesizers — it’s nearly 90 seconds until we hear the Chester Bennington’s vocals — and doesn’t let up from there, packing a widescreen chorus, a cameo by hip-hop legend Rakim, plenty of planetarium-ready pyro and even more squelching, squealing guitar into its six-minute running time.

In an interview with Radio.com, Shinoda described “Guilty All The Same” as “a good look into the DNA” of Linkin Park’s new album, due this summer, adding:

“A few months ago I was making some demos and writing this stuff and it sounded like something you could play on the radio … I don’t want to make any of that music. [’Guilty’] ended up being this new material. It’s louder; it’s more visceral than probably anything we’ve done recently.”

Something tells me Linkin Park fans would agree with those sentiments … and they can look forward to hearing “Guilty All The Same” — and, presumably, more songs off the band’s upcoming album — when LP hits the road with Thirty Seconds To Mars and AFI
on Carnivores, set to kick off August 8 in West Palm Beach, Florida.